Mop - 2.7 million sold in first week

New World of Warcraft® expansion sells 2.7 million copies in first week -- global subscriber base passes 10 million

PARIS, France -- October 4, 2012 -- Following the September 25 global rollout of World of Warcraft®: Mists of Pandaria™, the new expansion to the world’s #1 subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game, Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that millions of players have already joined the fight for Pandaria. During the first week of launch, prior to the release in China on October 2, the expansion had already sold through approximately 2.7 million copies and the game’s global player base passed 10 million subscribers, with growth across all major regions.*

At any rate, that sounds about what I'd expect: Cataclysm sold 3.3 million to start with, so a slight decline to go with the drop in subscriber numbers only makes sense. It's still a very strong amount, so congratulations to Blizzard!

The problem with the internet is parallel to its greatest achievement: it has given the little man an outlet where he can be heard. Most of the time however, the little man is a little man because he is not worth hearing.
Want to chat with people who aren't idiots? Join our IRC.

MoP isn't required until you hit level 85 and want to level further. A lot of people may have heard the hype and want to see what WoW is all about, so just bought the vanilla/Battlechest, which tbh is plenty of content for a new player for now.

They got a little under 1 million new players and not everyone has bought the expansion yet and also, of course, in Asia they don't buy the expansions. 10 million was easy to get to. I would assume by the end of the fourth quarter the sales will be closer to 4 million and maybe 11 million subscribers. Not bad for an over the hill game.

At any rate, that sounds about what I'd expect: Cataclysm sold 3.3 million to start with, so a slight decline to go with the drop in subscriber numbers only makes sense. It's still a very strong amount, so congratulations to Blizzard!

Of course it includes digital sales. Blizzard wouldn't announce a low number without digital sales.

The problem with the internet is parallel to its greatest achievement: it has given the little man an outlet where he can be heard. Most of the time however, the little man is a little man because he is not worth hearing.
Want to chat with people who aren't idiots? Join our IRC.

Although this number is still impressive, I guess it was rather dissappointing for Blizzard going from 3,3m sold copies of Cataclysm on the first day to 2,7m copies in the first week.

But actually it is not surprising, it was pretty much what I was expecting. Let's see if they learned from their mistakes and publish more content more often, or if they intend to let the game slowly die.

The problem with the internet is parallel to its greatest achievement: it has given the little man an outlet where he can be heard. Most of the time however, the little man is a little man because he is not worth hearing.
Want to chat with people who aren't idiots? Join our IRC.